19:38: Ladies, you can either do a good job of caring for the house or a poor job. That’s not me talking. That’s the Bible talking!

27:50: The Bible says cooking for your family is what you’re supposed to be doing! What else are you doing that’s so important, anyway? “Farmland”?! “Bejewel me”?! Facebook?!

29:00: You’re too busy to homeschool your kids? “I don’t even understand why you even have children if you’re gonna just drop ‘em off at the government school so they can be brainwashed to be a wicked, god-hating pervert. And I’m not saying that’s how they’re gonna turn out, but that’s the goal of that system, to make ‘em turn out that way!”

29:35: Public schools are run by Satan. Literally. Teachers and school board members are just little devils.

Anyone think that attitude maybe explains the constant lack of funding for education in the states? Or is that going a bit too far? Still, people like that guy can’t help.

31:00: Women, are you too busy? You better be too busy cooking, because that’s what the Bible says you should be doing.

36:12: I didn’t let my wife have a TV when we got married. She didn’t know what to do with her time since we had no kids and she didn’t have a job. So I told her, “Just cook me three awesome meals a day. Just really hit it out of the park.”

37:30: I just wanted my wife to do something that mattered! Like cooking!

From what background information do they agree? From what I’ve gathered from yours, it is based on the family farm. Father goes out and works all day. Mother stays in and works all day. His work brings in the big-ticket items that can be bartered or sold for other big ticket items. Her work, if it doesn’t all go to the family, can be bartered or sold for other small ticket items (e.g. egg money).

But when the father dies or becomes disabled? Well, there’s your Lifetime movie of strong woman doing a man’s work while agonizing over her children’s abbreviated childhood, huh? *strings swell as mother is silhouetted in the sunset and…fade to black*

By your choices, your wife is currently disadvantaged in the workplace, joey. You have the higher degree; you have no employment gap; you have added years of on-the-job experience to your resume. She’s falling behind month after month on Social Security so that she’ll get less when she’s eligible. She’s dependent upon you for health insurance. By how much can your salary be cut to maintain your family if you could not work, and she must? Would her current degree, with the detraction of employment gap, less experience, and society’s expectation of the work reliability/capability of a mother of four make it happen?

If you die or leave or become disabled, the situation, which will be hard in the first place, is one that your choices as a couple will make recognizably harder. Your children, rather than being able to turn their work/education entirely to their own independence and growing families, will have to help their mother.

If you’re able to have a close, loving relationship with your children even though you’re out of the home for the workday, then your wife can, too. Why would you risk damaging the family?

Are you attempting to shame my wife and me for the family dynamic that we have chosen? Just want to be sure.

And “by YOUR choices”? So my wife is completely incapable of making such choices for herself? Or are you suggesting that I forced my wife into this situation?

———————-
myeck waters:

This stuff lives BENEATH our rational mind. When a couple makes their oh-so-rational decision on which of them will be the one to stay home, part of that decision is based on the unconscious biases that have been programmed in. We all have them, and they tend to be heavily slanted toward what the society we were raised in viewed as “normal”.

But this reasoning can also apply to the woman “choosing” to go back to work, right?

Our “free will” decisions lie on a base of social conditioning.

You can argue that we lack free will, as long as you remain consistent doing so.

I must be imagining the dark outside, all the street lights being on and the room getting kinda dark when I turn the light off. Oh well, if I don’t get better, I’ll have to go and take a long nap in a couple of hours.

Joey,
I would make a distinction between enthusiasm and freedom. I have little doubt that there are people who have enthusiasm for the situations in which they find themselves, I know I am about my life and have trouble imagining that I am alone in that perspective. But to suggest that I have reached this solely on a considered approach to how my life might turn out is to discount the influence that culture at large, my specific social circle, and my past experiences have on my inclinations. You may not be aiming at the position that you believe you and your partner have reached where you are in the exclusion of these factors, but it’s been very hard for me to escape that conclusion in reading your comments here.

Why don’t you stop being deliberately stupid and answer our questions. Like why do you keep posting your presuppositional and unquestioned idiocy like it is the TRUTH, rather than the opinion of someone who never questions their presuppositions?

I smell entrapment. But music is a gift from Deity nonetheless. Concord and discord, harmonics and frequencies, in all a glorious canvas upon which we may seek to make our mortal mark. Do you like Coldplay?

The FedGov thing is what convinces me that he’s not comradebob. Bob never used the term, and people who talk about the FedGov never shut up about it. I’m just waiting for him to bust out “ChiCom” too. As I said over on the solar thread, FedGov is a particular shibboleth of the heavily armed, white-supremacist libertarian right.

Work outside the home is a sanity-saver for many women who would otherwise be deprived of adult company. An independent pay packet and bank account bolsters a sense of self-worth. You can see why insecure husbands might feel threatened. What’s that saying? “Women are mirrors with the delightful quality of reflecting men at twice life-size,” approximately? Dependency is bad for the soul and bad for relationships.

It was different when men and women both worked in the fields and the farm wife ran several home industries from producing eggs, milk, pork, honey and beer to weaving thread and fabrics and clothing the family.

Ah, I think we’ve come to the heart of the problem. joey, nobody’s suggesting that you’re a controlling monster who forced your wife to stay at home so that you could continue to go to work. We’re saying that the choices you both made were not completely unfettered by societal expectations. Let me share with you an example. My husband stayed at home with our kids. We had to deal with a lot of grief for that. Short list: mothers eyeing him with suspicion on the playground because he was a man around children, doctor’s offices and school offices always calling my number with child emergencies even though his was listed as the first contact, my parents giving us sad little “oh, that’s ok, so nice for you” responses to information about our lives, his parents giving him more blunted “so, when are you going back to work” messages, our kids’ friends’ parents getting uncomfortable when they realized it was him home when the kids came over to play instead of me, people I work with alternately making either jealous comments (wish I had a man who would cook and clean!) or condescending ones (oh, your husband…doesn’t have a job, then?), secretaries looking at us strangely when we filled out the forms at the doctor’s office with “stay at home parent” next to the blank for his occupation.

None of those were overtly hostile to the situation. None of those people thought they were judging us. None of those, by themselves, were really awful things. But it’s been a nonstop flow of that kind of thing for years. And none of that would have been there if I’d been the one to stay home instead. That would have been fine. That’s what’s expected. That’s the kind of thing we mean when we talk about whether it was truly a free choice or not; one of those choices is easy and supported by society, the other is hard and will constantly get a background level of rebuke.

Oh goodness me, abear is just going to milk that for all it’s worth. I note that neither Tethys the Possessed nor Chris Clarke the Evil have bothered to show up on his doorstep with broken bottles and banhammer.

Pizza, when covered with nutrition-minded toppings, is a healthy and delicious food.

Wife and I are working to lose weight, mostly by limiting carbs (and fat (but if we limit the carbs, the fat usually takes care of itself)) and have been pleasantly surprised how well pizza (both restaurant and home made) fits into the healthy eating.

cm’s changeable moniker, The Hanson Brothers were a side project of a band called NoMeansNo. NoMeansNo plays rather complex, jazz inflected punk rock. The Hanson Brothers were a concept band. What if The Ramones were hockey playing Canadians. The results were just as goofy as it sounds.

But my lack of cultural knowledge is well known. Given the crowd here, my ignorance is internationally known.

You can place me on Team Huh? as well. I’m abysmally ignorant of pop anything and almost always have to search stuff when it comes up. I remain as I was as a sprog, with my nose buried in a book most of the time. And since I pay no attention to ‘bestseller’ lists and the like, I’m generally ignorant of popular mass books too.

PZ just wrote a piece entitled “Come on, Ken, you can say it.” I followed the link over to the Answers in Genesis page. Whenever I read stuff like this my feelings of frustration slowly escalate. By the time I finished reading the article my frustration levels were nearly unbearable. Add a dash of feeling impotent and hopeless and I wonder why I bother surfing the net at all. I’m just glad there are folks out there who can move past the frustration and actually communicate, with knowledge.

What really caught my eye was the spin (redirection?) the author (Mitchell) used when addressing the Facebook inquirer’s message. Mitchell prefaces a quotation from the inquirer by writing “Frustrated with the difficulty of obtaining the published research data, he graciously wrote:” (followed by an excerpt from the Facebook post). As if the real problem was a lack of publicly available research data.

If the quotation is complete, the only frustration I can spot is the responder’s frustration that Mitchell didn’t provide links to any relevant research.

Then again at the end of the article, Mitchell complains that the relevant research material is hidden behind copyright laws and not freely available to the public. She continues how she would be required to purchase rights to the material and even then “fair use” requirements would severely limit sharing the information. Damn government and greedy capitalists make it so difficult for truth seeking creationists.

It’s a minor point I know. (simple things, my simple mind… or something like that.)

Fortunately Holland’s “Misogyny” does come in a Kindle version. If the foreword and introduction are any indication, I’d better get my chores done now, cause once started I’ll never be able to put it down. I have such poor self-control in that way.

Okay, finished up Manhood in America: a cultural history by Michael Kimmel. That was an engrossing and excellent read, learned a lot. I’m looking forward to what Esteleth has to say about it. Now it’s on to Guyland by Kimmel.

I think I could win all contests involving failing to know pop music since I don’t listen to any music willingly. Well, with the occasional exception for things like Prairie Home Companion’s spoof of Les Mis.

Then again at the end of the article, Mitchell complains that the relevant research material is hidden behind copyright laws and not freely available to the public

Completely off-topic: How easy is it to get access for example through libraries? My library gives me access to most articles I want. It even allows for online access through their website. All you have to do is go to the library and set up a user account, all free.

The sidewalk of Placencia, a stroll to the east, and toes find themselves immersed in warm sand. The waves, slowly and rhythmically engaging the beach. An umbrella casts a shadow under the light of the full moon. She sighs, content for the first time since she can remember. Finally free from… them. In the distance, a guitar strums. Straining, she attempts to better perceive the features of the silhouette, and the meaning of the music.

Cement, sand and ondz experience, starting this month at his home in Larsen, the beach. But I never forgot you, that is the mind. In the rest of his days. Training tools, music, family or try and at the top of the screen.

As Caine said, it will depend on the library. And on how much effort I want to expend. Some stuff is just hard to get. On the other hand it’s amazing how much info I can get with a little effort. And if I’m really stymied, asking for help from the relevant researchers themselves usually gets results. Just gotta show some real interest, respect and patience.

In regards to the AIG article, the whole issue was just a rhetorical diversion. I have little doubt that the author had all the resources necessary to find and communicate the research involved.

When I was young (1960s and 70s; highschool class of 1977), “oldies” stations played music of the 1950s and early 60s. The music of 30 years ago was, like, Benny Goodman and the Andrews Sisters and shit. Now the music of 30 years ago is played every night in the bar I hang out at. My daughter (16 yo) wears Beatles and Pink Floyd t-shirts. That would be like me, at her age, wearing, like, Bing Crosby and Tommy Dorsey t-shirts when I was 16 in 1975. No way!
Something’s different or the evolution of popular (only?) music has slowed down or something.

That would be like me, at her age, wearing, like, Bing Crosby and Tommy Dorsey t-shirts when I was 16 in 1975. No way!

I’m even older, primary school in the 50s. So I have one 20yr old and one younger in the house in the early 2000s, and it’s like walking through a broken time warp machine. Innocently doing not much on a Saturday morning, and I hear a young Frank Sinatra followed by Rage Against The Machine followed by Ella Fitzgerald ….. then Patti Page, The Cat Empire, Ben Folds Five, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong and even South Australia’s contribution to the world of pub bands – Working Class Man sung/croaked/roared by Jimmy Barnes. Then maybe some Bach or Mozart.

All well and good bringing up kids to appreciate all kinds of music wherever it’s found. It’s a bit jarring to hear the result sometimes.

In meat space, people keep me away from the music player. I will play some Wiemar era cabaret songs and follow it up with some Jesus Lizard. Or Temptations followed by Sonic Youth. They think I am trying to cause mood whiplash on purpose.

As the youngest of five kids, my musical tastes were borrowed from my older sibs, so I was several years out of step. The music that popular when I was a teenager? When that insipid pap started getting played as Classic Rock I was pissed off for a decade.

Are there any other MMA fans hanging around the ‘dome?* I’m pretty fucking excited about the upcoming Rousey V Carmouche fight. It’s the main event at UFC 157 and the first ever women’s bout in the octagon.

Big Rhonda Rousey fan right here. I’m very pleased that Dana White finally saw the potential of women’s MMA. He was resistant to it for many years. It’s exciting!

I have two lines going as my main interest. One I’m breeding purely for temperament, the other to create a solid black corn snake. The others are het testing for the most part. I’ve 7 females going this year, though I’ll be dropping down to just 3 next year. I’ve had strange odds the previous years.

Oh, that poor, oppressed abear. The dear was subjected to harsh criticism and a barroom brawl threat that ultimately was nothing more than a joke. I loved seeing him talk about lawyers and
terrorist threats. How heavy is the head sporting a slymepit crown?:

Re:pizzas-
Years ago, shortly after I first met M, in an attempt to make better choices for our health (he wanted to start working out and wanted my advice on healthier eating. Homemade pizzas made with sandwich wraps, pizza sauce, lots of cheese and turkey peperoni. Sometimes drizzled with EVOO, or fresh herbs. One wrap with enough toppings often provided a full meal. This also works for quick late night snacks.

Our self-image from those years, in other words, is especially adhesive. So, too, are our preferences. “There’s no reason why, at the age of 60, I should still be listening to the Allman Brothers,” Steinberg says. “Yet no matter how old you are, the music you listen to for the rest of your life is probably what you listened to when you were an adolescent.” Only extremely recent advances in neuroscience have begun to help explain why.

Yeah, or being into Woodoy guthrie and Pete Seeger. No one listened to those guys in the seventies.

Not sure what your point is. First, I was explicitly talking about ‘popular music’, and those guys were never on the radio. And second, not very many people did listen to Guthrie and Seeger in the seventies. Some people listened to Dixieland jazz or accordian polkas or Wagner in the seventies too, but, see, I’m not talking about niche music. (I was a youthful jazz elitist myself; the tastes of my classmates ran to the Eagles and Steve Miller and Zeppelin but I was into Eric Dolphy and Miles).

Do you imagine culture should progress in a linear fashion?

um, what? There was no ‘imagine’ or ‘should’ in my comment; it was just an observation.

Imagine all the blockquotes, it’s easy if you try,
Typos below us, unclosed tags awry.
Imagine all the comments
formatted correctly AHAHAHA
You may say I’m a bad typist,
Well I’m not the only one.
I hope someday the preview
Will void all mistakes, every one.

Funny about that musical tastes thing. I remember my mother getting all hot under the collar about ‘entertainers’ coming to the community centre where she lives and presenting stuff like “Roll Out The Barrels” and similar old-time stuff. “That’s my parents’ generation music! Not ours!” (She’s 88 this week and there is nothing in the world that she wants, needs or won’t find something odd to say about, in the way of a gift. I have no idea what to get.)

She wants the eras of Frank Sinatra and The Beatles as well as a bit of WW2 music and all those film musicals. The stuff from when she was going out dancing and when her kids (my lot – the baby boomers) were doing the same.

Something’s different or the evolution of popular (only?) music has slowed down or something.

It could be due in part to just having access to a longer history of recordings. Sure, there were recordings in the 1920s from the 1890s or whatever, but most didn’t survive very long and most people couldn’t afford them. People growing up now can easily get exposed to something like Pink Floyd without being a fan or deliberately searching out music like that: their grandparents have recordings, their parents, their friends’ friends, youtube has recordings, MTV and VH1 used to have recordings…. and most of those are all still around to be enjoyed.

Why is it often something like Pink Floyd, rather than some obscure and more crappy band from the same era? Because it’s not as obscure or crappy.

I remember, back in the early 80s, trying to find Woody Guthrie records. Or The Weavers. Or even some Kingston Trio other than the three greatest hits albums, the Hungry i, and one other. Now I have far better access to folk music of the fifties and sixties than I did 30 years ago. Makes it far easier to be eclectic.

The Internet is Teh awesome in exploring music in a way that wasn’t possible, like,…before the Internet. I used to have to go to the record store and talk with the clerk or owner to figure out what sounded cool, or what was new, or what I would like. And sometimes I’d hear about things from friends too, but I always had to plunk down a few bucks to get a record that I hadn’t likely heard yet, and that entails all kind of risk when you only have a few bucks and evolutionary spans of free time that must be filled with sound.

I don’t feel romantic nostalgia about this.

I spent all last week listening to black metal on the internets, for the sake of satisying curiosity. I didn’t have to buy anything. Then I spent like two hours listening to Throbbing Gristle, and didn’t have to buy anything either. I could not have done this in the nineties. It was liberating.

I have no problem finding new awesome music to listen to, even though I’m still fond of the Breeders, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Us3, and Digable Planets. Not to mention, I still find it quite fun to go to contra dances.

@ Joey: So not debating the huge free will issue (got tired of that in college), but let me ask you a question:

Do you believe truly and freely and deep down in your heart that a woman may choose entirely of her free will as you define it never to marry, never to have children (to in fact not even want to marry or have children), never have to be dependent on anybody, let alone a man, for her survival, and, to move away from the negatives, can choose to pursue a doctorate and and a job and her own interests entirely unfettered by having to limit her choices in any way by her “responsibility” to another human being, and in effect, to be responsible (insofar as any one individual can be completely responsible in a culture) for her own life, money, retirement, etc. (luckily being privileged by being white and coming from a middle-class family before Dad ran off with graduate student in this oh yes completely hypothetical situation), and be completely and utterly happy and not feel in the least deprived?

Do you really claim that you feel no sense that perhaps there’s something wrong with her, that she’s just “making the best” of nobody wanting her, that she’s somehow unnatural (by your definition, totally NOT inflected by social attitudes or narratives, nope, no way, arrived at in complete isolation)?

Do you even know any women who fall into this cateogory?

Have you ever seen how people treat women who fall into this cateogory?

And finally, why are you so desperately invested in receiving some validation here for your and your wife’s totally free choices?

And do you have her permission to be talking about her all over these threads?

Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California — Hastings, said both men and women can be subject to what she termed a “flexibility stigma.” It can be an issue for women seeking a part-time or flex-time schedule, but for men, “It’s typically triggered if they even try to take leave,” she said.

[…]

In California, which began mandating paid family leave in 2004, the effect on men’s participation in caregiving is measurable, Appelbaum said. The number of men taking leave to care for a relative rose slightly between 2004 and 2012, from 30 percent to 33 percent, but the number taking time off after the birth of a child nearly doubled, climbing from 17 percent to 29 percent in that same time. “When we talk to HR managers about this… they told us that once the leaves were paid, it became more acceptable,” Appelbaum said.

Advocates for more flexible workplaces say men’s involvement ultimately will have a snowball effect that will lead to positive change. “The real advantage of having men taking leave is that when the issue of leave and the issue of caregiving is not just a women’s issue, you’re more likely to get good policies and not get gender-based judgments,” Garcia said.

You might be able to find them as pets there in China. I know there are some people in Japan and Taiwan that have corn snakes and breed them. They are fabulous pet snakes because they don’t grow very large and are usually very docile.

@music:
I still listen to a lot of the music I grew up with (The Corries, Tannahill Weavers, Silly Wizard, Steeleye Span, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, the Everly brothers; I grew up listening to my dad’s records a lot), but I’ve also been able to find new music that I like too (thank you, internet). I’ve been really liking Anggun lately.

[Evolutionary psychologists] offer a far more “misandrous” account of rape than anything offered by radical feminists. To them, men are driven by evolutionary imperatives to rape, pillage, and destroy in order to ensure that they are still reproductively successful. This view is echoed by several neo-conservative thinkers who, in their effort to discredit feminism and gay liberation, actually end up insulting men.

The argument begins as a critique of feminism. By abandoning their natural roles as wives and mothers in the home and seeking satisfaction in the workplace in some vain imitation of men, women (encouraged by feminism) have reversed nature’s plan and wreaked social havoc. Women’s naturally demure sexual purity no longer tames men. Absentee fathers, sexual promiscuity, gang rape, and homosexuality are the inevitable results. George Gilder’s 1986 Men and Marriage (the republication of his 1973 book Sexual Suicide) offers a Hobbesian view of masculinity: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

I’ve noticed this as well! A lot of the conservative types (and many EvPsych types seem to be conservative) seem to have these deeply regressive views of men as barely restrained rutting beasts.

And they call us “misandrists”!

The above was x-posted in the Lounge.

Caine, I read Guyland a few years ago. It is also quite good. And profoundly depressing.

Yes, so have I. It’s hard to ignore just how often anti-feminists are deeply misandrist. Same goes with rape apologists – Bill Openthalt was arguing ‘rape is male nature’ in the NYT thread recently. Didn’t get it at all how misandrist that view happens to be.

I haven’t read either of the two books that you and Esteleth are talking about, but that view will never be understood as misandrist until people become more aware of, and intolerant of rape culture. As long as violence is sexy and sex is violence, “rape as male nature” will be seen as something masculine, although it’s a prime example of toxic masculinity.

I’m sure all of that was covered in the books. Just connecting the dots for myself. I wish people like Bill Openthalt would, too.

By the way, is there discussion of rape culture in the books you’ve been reading, put in context of masculinity?

By the way, is there discussion of rape culture in the books you’ve been reading, put in context of masculinity?

I haven’t finished Guyland yet, but yes, it’s addressed in Manhood in America, albeit indirectly. There’s more focus on the history of violence being an accepted part of masculinity, and not just accepted, but considered to be a vital part of masculinity. There’s also a great deal on the culture of entitlement, which is the basis of rape culture as we know it now.

Guyland deals more explicitly with the “boys will be boys” notion and I think it will also deal with rape culture more directly, but I’m not deep into yet.

One thing that is addressed in Manhood in America is how and why men think that the best way to revenge themselves on another man is to rape his wife/daughter/mother, and that historically, rape has been about putting another man in his place – women have simply been the objects in attaining that goal.

As I found in my interviews with more than 400 young men for my book Guyland, in the aftermath of these sorts of events – when high-status high school athletes commit felonies, especially gang rape – they are surrounded and protected by their fathers, their school administrations and their communities. These out-of-control, rapacious thugs are our school’s heroes — “our guys,” as the gang rapists at Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey were called nearly two decades ago. The players themselves hold to a code of silence, the omerta of sexual assault: No one ever rats out a fellow bro.

Hello, Pharyngula. My name is Yvonne. Oh, “athyco” is still fine, please.

Why tell you? Because I made the mistake of trusting a near-‘pitter who got my email addy through my comments either on his blog or YouTube channel. He sent me what seemed to be a sincere request, and I answered him. Today, he replied to a ‘pitter’s comment on his blog identifying me as Dixie/Yvonne. (Dixie is part of my YouTube name.) There’s nowhere but my email that he could have gotten it, and no one on his blog who wouldn’t know whom he meant with just plain “Dixie.”

So here I am. It’s a weird combination of feelings, but mostly grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

In other news, I’m reading this *gag* wonderful *gag* book titled “You lost me” which is all about reasons why young folk are being less committed to christianity and how to get them back.

I’m reading this because my best friend from high school (a catholic high school, which began my journey towards atheism) wanted to do a discussion of the book with her friends and wanted input from various levels of faith, from extreme to none at all. I happen to be the none at all.

However, this book is damn painful to read. The author has no idea how condescending he often comes across, and uses some lovely catch phrases like ‘scientism’ and calls those of us who were christian but now don’t believe at all ‘prodigals’. I started reading it early January. I’m only 60% of the way through. I can usually take down an 800 page novel in 2 days and this book is nowhere near that long. I just have to put it down frequently before I start chewing on my kindle.

If my telling him that he’s got the passive-aggressive cowardly swipes down pat is enough to make him think, Caine, it’ll be good.

And I’m about as boringly bullet-proof nowadays as they come. Heck, I share a property line with the dead Methodists, and the pastor thinks I’m one of the almost mythical good atheists. (During yardwork, I gather up the blown-away fake flowers even if they’re in the ditch across the street. And I made a wire pen for them so the families could find them on their next visiting day.)

rowan, I think I’d hate the book, too, but the discussion might turn out better than expected if you can give them some terminology examples that they’d not like to show that he’s doing that to others. Gah! Hard to tell, isn’t it, when you know you’re going to have such a planned range in the room. (And thanks for the harmonic grrrrrrrrr.)

One big difference in the way music is made these days in comparison to yesteryear: Live performance. Since recordings came along the opportunities for muso’s to get regular paying gigs has diminished. I’m talking about gigs like playing live music for radio theater and so forth. Or playing five nights a week at a club.

Might be different in the US but here in New Zealand unless you are in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch your chances of finding live music happening are fairly slim.

And just in case anyone is interested in my never ending reading list, next up after Guyland is Assholes: A Theory by Aaron James. Mister just finished it and declared it good. We both got a laugh out of a passage early on which declared Dawkins an asshole. James is right, but for the wrong reasons (It’s not because he was mean to the goddists. It’s because he’s privilege blind and sexist.) Hee.

I’ve read your (lengthly) re-cap of your discussion on your blog. I agree with your paragraph that begins: “That wording was poor”. I also sympathize with your encouragement to avoid hyperbole and escalation.

However, I do notice that nowhere in your re-cap do you mention any discussion you had with people supporting Shermer’s “side”. This suggests to me that you haven’t done any such discussion. Once again, I ask, is this correct?

I have 4 cats as well! Just make sure the lid is secure and you’ll be okay. Also, no, I had no idea that dier meant ‘animal’! It’s from my conlang and means ‘fire’. Many of my snakes are named from my constructed-language that I like to work on. Torandre means “at last” (lit. ‘this finally’). Vanay (actually vane) is an exclamation of surprise. Ferenea is ‘snow’. Leshen is ‘silver’. Essan is ‘red’.

Athyco and Caine, thanks for the encouragement on the book. I’m gonna need it, as the discussion is on the 21st. Must… finish…. stupid ass book…

athyco
That sucks. I’m not at all committed to my anonymity, I’m totally safe, but it would still kind of piss me off.Jon Trollstein
Seriously? You call yourself trollstein and dump a video without comment or explanation? That’s your best shot?

Apropros of nothing, really, other than general theme of sexism, but I was unlucky enough to see the latest episode of the Big Bang Theory over the weekend. In the opening scene Sheldon complains that Leonard has had too much oestrogen and as a result is behaving like a whining woman.

i don’t watch the show out of choice normally, as it’s all the same jokes recycled over and over, but this was just horrible.

I understand what you’re saying. But just because one isn’t “enthusiastic” about making a particular choice doesn’t necessarily mean that “freedom” isn’t involved in making that choice.

You may not be aiming at the position that you believe you and your partner have reached where you are in the exclusion of these factors, but it’s been very hard for me to escape that conclusion in reading your comments here.

I have admitted to the existence of social pressures numerous times. My point is that it is still possible to make a free decision even with all these factors involved.

———————
myeck waters:

I would have answered an honest question. But you don’t ask honest questions.

How is it not an honest question? This is what you said…

This stuff lives BENEATH our rational mind. When a couple makes their oh-so-rational decision on which of them will be the one to stay home, part of that decision is based on the unconscious biases that have been programmed in. We all have them, and they tend to be heavily slanted toward what the society we were raised in viewed as “normal”.

And I asked whether this reasoning can also apply to the woman choosing to go back to work.

If the answer is yes, then the point is essentially that ALL choices are made in part by programming, including the choice for a woman to go back to work after having children. Alright, fine…ALL choices are in part the result of social factors.

But if the answer is no, then there would obviously be an inconsistency. You would have to explain why a woman’s “oh-so-rational decision” to stay home is more “programmed” than a woman’s decision to go back to work.

As I’ve said, I agree about the social pressures. But in our case, my wife has received MUCH more pressure to go back to work rather than to stay at home. We grew up in households where both of parents worked (out of financial necessity), and daycare was our grandparents for most of our childhood. My wife has a bachelors degree in finance, and numerous family/friends have questioned why she would “waste” her degree just to stay home. Her own mother has pressured her to go back to work, since that is what she did when my wife was a child. Her dad still expects her to go back to grad school. Her younger sister is a climbing up the corporate world even with a brand new baby (her parents are used as daycare).

When we had our first child up in New England (not exactly the hotbed of conservatism), the vast majority of younger couples with children chose the daycare route. With the exception of one family, we didn’t personally know any mothers at the time who chose to stay home after having their first child. Since then, we have moved down south (exclusively due to cost of living reasons) where it is more common to see stay at home parents. But still, the pressures for my wife to go back to work remain from family and friends and most especially former classmates/co-workers, not to mention the shaming that she gets once in a while that isn’t too much different than some of the posts you see here.

————
athyco:

By your choice–the choice that you and your wife have made. Nowhere in that post is there an intimation that you (singular) have forced your wife into anything.

Thanks for the clarification. But you have to admit given the context of this conversation where numerous posters have argued that my wife “didn’t have a choice” or “much of choice” in staying home, the phrase definitely needed some clarification.

Damn. I didn’t realize that if joey could latch onto “your,” that he’d ignore all the rest about education, employment gap, work experience, insurance, and Social Security.

As for the rest of your post listing the cons of a stay at home parent, we are definitely aware of all those disadvantages. But you focused only on one side of the choice. What about the advantages for a stay at home parent? The advantages for both parent and child are obvious and plentiful, and there is no need to list them out. For some families, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages that you listed, not to mention they are in a more stable financial position that would allow for such a choice.

My wife and I don’t think we’re “foolish” in making this decision for her to stay home. Although it has certainly been very tough on her physically and mentally to stay home to raise four children (have I mentioned before that she has by far the tougher job?), she has made the choice willingly and we both feel it has been best for the entire well-being of the family. You and others may not believe me when I say this…it doesn’t matter.

———————————
carlie:

We’re saying that the choices you both made were not completely unfettered by societal expectations.

I can agree with that.

That’s the kind of thing we mean when we talk about whether it was truly a free choice or not; one of those choices is easy and supported by society, the other is hard and will constantly get a background level of rebuke.

Thank you for volunteering you and your husband’s story. I certainly commend your husband’s choice to stay home, and I’m certain he made the decision willingly out of concern for what is best for the family, despite all the grief that he expected to receive.

I understand how one choice can be considered “harder” than the other, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the “easy” choice is always more “free”. Like I’ve asserted above, my wife choosing to stay home after our first child can be considered more difficult than if she decided to go back to work. The societal pressures of urban New England in 2005 is not quite the same as they were in 1955, or even some rural middle-America town now. But again, just because it may have been “easier” for her to choose to go back to work doesn’t necessarily make that decision any less “free” either.

——————–
rrede:

Do you believe truly and freely and deep down in your heart that a woman may choose entirely of her free will as you define it never to marry, never to have children (to in fact not even want to marry or have children), never have to be dependent on anybody, let alone a man, for her survival, and, to move away from the negatives, can choose to pursue a doctorate and and a job and her own interests entirely unfettered by having to limit her choices in any way by her “responsibility” to another human being, and in effect, to be responsible (insofar as any one individual can be completely responsible in a culture) for her own life, money, retirement, etc. (luckily being privileged by being white and coming from a middle-class family before Dad ran off with graduate student in this oh yes completely hypothetical situation), and be completely and utterly happy and not feel in the least deprived?

Absolutely.

Do you really claim that you feel no sense that perhaps there’s something wrong with her, that she’s just “making the best” of nobody wanting her, that she’s somehow unnatural (by your definition, totally NOT inflected by social attitudes or narratives, nope, no way, arrived at in complete isolation)?

No, I don’t claim that there is “something wrong” with such a person. Not every man/woman has the vocation for marriage.

Do you even know any women who fall into this cateogory?

Yes.

Have you ever seen how people treat women who fall into this cateogory?

Yes, I can see how such women can be stigmatized. I don’t think it’s right to look down on a woman (or man) simply because she (he) chooses not to get married and have a family.

And finally, why are you so desperately invested in receiving some validation here for your and your wife’s totally free choices?

I’m not. I’m just pointing out that a woman deciding to stay home can actually be a free decision on her part. If you followed the conversation from the start, it has been suggested right off the bat that due to “patriarchal pressures” a woman choosing to stay home isn’t really considered to be a truly free choice. Such a blanket statement is complete hogwash, and it has been my attempt to reason that it is hogwash. People can claim that such a decision is stupid and foolish all they want, but please don’t claim that it isn’t a decision at all.

However, I do notice that nowhere in your re-cap do you mention any discussion you had with people supporting Shermer’s “side”. This suggests to me that you haven’t done any such discussion. Once again, I ask, is this correct?

Yes, that is correct. At the time I participated in two FTB threads (on Greta’s and Ophelia’s blogs) and then wrote about it on my own blog, I had not discussed this issue anywhere else. (I did subsequently post a couple of remarks on Harriet Hall’s post about this.)

I don’t normally read any Shermer blogs and my knowledge of this was from reading FTB posts and things, such as Shermer’s replies, linked to from those.

[Evolutionary psychologists] offer a far more “misandrous” account of rape than anything offered by radical feminists. To them, men are driven by evolutionary imperatives to rape, pillage, and destroy in order to ensure that they are still reproductively successful.

As I’ve said, I agree about the social pressures. But in our case, my wife has received MUCH more pressure to go back to work rather than to stay at home.

Wait a minute, maybe we’re arguing about different things? There are two types of pressure/decisions here: whether anyone stays home, and then who stays home. I heard a record scratch in my head reading that, because I thought the main argument you have recently been making was that there was no pressure for your wife to stay home instead of you. Because in that case, you’d be under about ten times as much pressure to go back to work as she would. If the argument is simply about whether she stays at home or you have daycare, that’s a different argument. Still pressure on women to stay home instead, but not as much as the pressure for her to be the one who stays home if a choice of one of the two has to be made.

My point is that it is still possible to make a free decision even with all these factors involved.

This sentence makes very little sense to me. Do you mean to suggest that all of these factors can be considered and balanced against to produce some semblance of a complete consideration before a decision is made? Or do you mean that it can be free despite not considering all influencing factors?

I cry bullshit on the first option, no one is that aware of all of the facets of their situation. And the second seems contradictory to me, so long as there are social, cultural, or biological influences that are not considered saying that a decision was freely made is a stretch that makes me cringe.

Still, I am pleased for you and your family that the decisions you have collectively made feel like the best ones. I wish that more families could feel that way. However, I don’t think that people claiming they are above or have transcended the difficulties involved in making decisions is going to help that come about in any fashion.

Okay, I’m trying to respond to lee coye’s “gendered slurs are not sexist” argument on the “I am asked a question about commenting” thread, and they’re not showing up.

I’ve used the n-word as an example of why insults based on immutable characteristics are more harmful and prejudicial and cause splash damage, and I’m wondering if there’s an auto-mod filter specifically for that word.

Oh, and surely I do not need to add that saying you were wanting to know what people made of the video sounds rather like a justification you came up with afterwards, otherwise you would have asked what people thought in the first place.

You do yourself no favours being quite so transparently dishonest (or incompetent).

My wife and I don’t think we’re “foolish” in making this decision for her to stay home. Although it has certainly been very tough on her physically and mentally to stay home to raise four children (have I mentioned before that she has by far the tougher job?), she has made the choice willingly and we both feel it has been best for the entire well-being of the family. You and others may not believe me when I say this…it doesn’t matter.

So why are you still blathering on about it? It doesn’t matter if we “believe” you, right?

I’m getting damn tired of hearing about your wife and never from your wife. No, I’m not intimating that she needs to trot out here to perform a convincing act; I’ll state outright that I’m tired of you blathering. Finally, I’m tired of your oblique sniping. First, you ignored argument to focus on a pronoun everyone knows can be singular or plural to jump to the idea that you “forced” a choice on your wife. Then– see what you put in quotation marks in your latest about my comments to you? “Foolish.” I never fucking said that either. You pulled them both out on your own, thank you very much. It was in your own brain, so if you’re honest, you’ll shut up about what “you and the others may not believe” and deal with what you yourself believe.

Festering crap, if you can’t see that expected societal memes made you jump to the “forced” and “foolish” conclusions while ignoring that similar expectations are as hard at work in your other choices, you’re a lost cause.

I just saw the conference discussion about “the nature of trolling” you had on Feb.2 with Pooka, C0nc0rdance, et. al.

Let me preface the meat of my comment first, by admitting I am no friend of FTB. The specific reasons are unimportant. Suffice it to say, I am diametrically opposed to the political attitudes here. As such, I am not typically inclined to run to anyone’s defense here. However, after having watched the vast majority of the video (I’m up to the first 55 minutes), I can’t help but find myself agreeing with almost everything you had to say in your own defense in that discussion.

What’s more, I actually think you were trolled hard.

Why do I think this? Well, in the past, I moderated a fairly large message board for several years, that dealt with personal and ethical topics that provoked incredibly powerful emotional and psychological defenses in people who came there. As you would expect, we were knee-deep in trolls. A handful of whom were actually CRIMINALLY destructive. Still, whenever we had to ban someone, twenty people would pop up demanding to know why we were so “capricious” and “tyrannical”.

I realize this is going to raise a few hackles, but from where I was sitting, this is EXACTLY what that discussion looked like to me. It was a “concern troll” ambush.

The discussion was not honest at all. Because if it was, instead of calling it a discussion about “the nature and effect of trolling on the internet”, they would have called it, “We’re really annoyed at you about this ban-hammer thing, PZ! So, you need to explain yourself.”

Lastly, I have to admit as well that I feel a significant amount of frustration and disgust at how (to put it in C0nc0rdance’s terms) “inward looking” the _whole_ of the internet atheist community has become.

The world is on the verge of another dark age. Christian fundamentalism is surging not just in the US, but in Europe as well. Muslim fundamentalism is sprouting everywhere (in no small part, a result of US and European foreign policy), a powerful anti-reason and anti-science constituency has been eroding civil society for decades, and nothing seems to be getting in its way. The slow march back into ignorance and fear appears to be relentless and unstoppable.

And yet, here we all are, the ones holding the candles. The ones bearing responsibility for the weak flame of human growth, human potential, and human progress, and what are we spending our time on? What are we pouring our considerable intellectual energy and resources into?

Let me preface the meat of my comment first, by admitting I am no friend of FTB. The specific reasons are unimportant. Suffice it to say, I am diametrically opposed to the political attitudes here. As such, I am not typically inclined to run to anyone’s defense here. However, after having watched the vast majority of the video (I’m up to the first 55 minutes), I can’t help but find myself agreeing with almost everything you had to say in your own defense in that discussion.

Nice of you to inform us upfront you are opposed to all form of social justice. It makes you an arsehole of course, but at least it is honest.

So…you are conservative, racist, anti-feminist, anti-secularist, pro-religion, pro-accommadationism and anti-marriage equality? Those are all diametrically opposed to political stances that I’ve seen PZ take here at Pharyngula.

And yet, here we all are, the ones holding the candles. The ones bearing responsibility for the weak flame of human growth, human potential, and human progress, and what are we spending our time on? What are we pouring our considerable intellectual energy and resources into?

Hmmmm…..

Let me preface the meat of my comment first, by admitting I am no friend of FTB. The specific reasons are unimportant. Suffice it to say, I am diametrically opposed to the political attitudes here. As such, I am not typically inclined to run to anyone’s defense here. However, after having watched the vast majority of the video (I’m up to the first 55 minutes), I can’t help but find myself agreeing with almost everything you had to say in your own defense in that discussion.

I believe many of us are pouring our efforts into fighting racism, sexism, homophobia, religious fundamentalism. You know, those political attitudes you are opposed to. I am thinking you meant something else by this statement, but this is how it reads.

And yet, here we all are, the ones holding the candles. The ones bearing responsibility for the weak flame of human growth, human potential, and human progress, and what are we spending our time on? What are we pouring our considerable intellectual energy and resources into?

You know, I think your observation about the content of that video was spot on. I’m just curious how it is that you think that you’re diametrically opposed to the political views here when you say you’re in favor of advancing human growth, human potential, and human progress. After all, the main difference between traditional gnu atheists (I guess that’s a thing now) and atheists in the A+ vein is that the latter recognize that “human” includes people of color, women, non-gender-binary folks, disabled people, lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, and so on. And they take action to ensure that their efforts to spread the light of rationality and critical thinking reach all humans, not just the minority of relatively privileged mostly white, mostly male people who have formed the bulk of the movement in the past.

And yet, here we all are, the ones holding the candles. The ones bearing responsibility for the weak flame of human growth, human potential, and human progress, and what are we spending our time on? What are we pouring our considerable intellectual energy and resources into?

Making videos yelling at PZ Meyers because he blocks people.

Gee, Greg, why are you moaning about this here? We’re deeply committed to social justice here (most of us) and we’re one of the only places holding up a candle to all those who wish to stomp all over women because, hey, that’s the nature of things! Why don’t you click off and tell all those making pointless, whinging videos to find something better to do with their time? Why don’t you click off to the slymepit and the ‘skeptic’ network put in place solely to rag on FTB and give them your awe inspiring message? Let them know that 2 years spent on concentrated harassment campaigns is just, well, silly.

For those who asked (and in spite of the intense hostility and defensiveness packed up along with the question), I will answer your question earnestly. I am none of the labels cast at me.

I am “anti-political” in the way that Christopher Hitchens was “anti-theist” (I am anti-theist as well, but that is beside the point).

At it’s root, the state is not simply the aggressive use of force applied to impose personal preferences. It is the moral claim that said aggression is not only necessary, but __GOOD__ (both of which, are insanely contradictory).

No one has ever been able to justify the statist position to me sufficiently. 47 million little slips of paper with my name scribbled on them, do not suddenly give me magical power to turn murder, theft, kidnapping, and extortion into Goods. Therefore, I remain not only a non-believer in the state, but a human being appalled by the moral horror of the state, as well.

Having read many posts on Free Thought Blogs over the years, I have not found anyone on this site who shares this conclusion with me. It is one of the reasons I have been nothing but a casual reader of it, for those same years. And, it is why I say I am diametrically opposed to the political attitudes here.

I do believe in being honest. And the honest truth is, no matter how much I may hate ignorance, bigotry, poverty, sickness, and cruelty, I cannot countenance adding organized violence to that list, no matter how it is packaged and sold (monarchy, minarchy, communism, socialism, democracy, whatever) and I realize that pointing the guns of the state at people, threatening them with the false choice of compliance or suffering (just like religion does), is not going to solve any of these social problems.

Short version, saying ‘it’s not always sexist’ or ‘it’s not all that ablist’ aren’t valid excuses. You might get away with them in other spaces than this without being called out, but that doesn’t validate the excuses.

that multiple definitions exist is not a defense, especially when the two most common ones are “crippled” and “pathetic”; in fact, it’s the connection between those two meanings that makes the word ableist.

also, not “everyone” is accusing you of defending the use of the word. I haven’t. I’ve merely pointed out that after seeing the pattern repeat, people don’t have much “benefit of the doubt” left, hence the jumpy responses to you

I guess it is easy to be “anti-political” when you are part of the privileged class.

Part of what we are talking about is changing the culture, the climate of our culture so that equality is a given… not about forcing people to be different, but helping people to see our own biases and prejudices. To address them. To make spaces where women can be free of harassment.

thisislame: Let’s start with your user name, which is obviously the beginning of picking a fight both because of the site policy about using the word ‘lame’, and because your choice of user name indicates that, despite asking questions, you just want us to know you think the whole thing is stupid.

Your comment #953:

“Hmmmm, to me it (my comment: referring to the word cunt, as stated first in your comment @ #947) is no different then calling someone a ‘dick’ or ‘dickhead’. Calling someone a ‘pussy’, on the other hand, does seem sexist since you are equating being a wimp or scared with a female part.”

Response:

Why the arbitrary line between cunt and pussy? Both refer to what you stated (among other things): these terms are an unfavorable comparison between genitalia being used a slur and comparison to being female, in order to shame. And yet, suddenly, there’s an arbitrary distinction within the same class of insults. There are two likely causes. First, that you are under the impression that the basis of using the word ‘cunt’ is not that same comparison to female genitalia and weakness/unworthiness/disgust. This is highly unlikely, since you know to make the analysis on other terms in the same category.

The second most likely reason for doing so is that you’re stirring shit to make yourself feel justified in some preconception or later course of action (likely insults and a flounce you won’t stick). Because your user name functions in roughly the same fashion, this is the more likely possibility.

Moreover, the presumption for this comment is the relative harmlessness of the term ‘cunt’, or the presumption that comparing someone to stereotypically female genitalia is defensible. This sort of set up is used three different ways by trolls here: first, to state that using the term is okay because the troll likes it or his (9.99 times out of 10) friends like using it. Second, it’s sometimes used in London, therefore no other use of it is really a problem. Third, that there needs to be an insult for some sort of offensive behavior and the term cunt is handy.

Your comment #956:

“Wow, such a simple question arises such hostility… I figured I could save some time and have one of the enlightened folks here tell me. I’m just lazy is what it comes down to.”

Response:

After IDing pussy as an offensive term, any responses to the disingenuousness of the previous post are treated as overreactions to a “simple question,” with the clear implication that there should be no problem with asking a disingenuous question after clear indicating that the response is disingenuous through both framing and user name. The attempt here to frame any responses which do not ignore the disingenuousness of your name and previous comments as unreasonable and the sarcastic use of “enlightened” to describe your responders makes it clear that any meaningful analysis of your request (eg any analysis which acknowledges your attempt thus far to defend the use of the term and your framing of objection as unreasonable) will automatically be ‘unreasonable’, setting up the use of ‘women are too emotional/the subject is not rationally defensible’ as a latter attempt to muster support for your use of the word cunt.

The tl;dr version: Look here, you disingenuous asshole, I see whut you’re trying to do there. And, I’d imagine, so does everyone else.

So you’re anti-political. And does that mean that you’re “diametrically opposed” to every single political stance that PZ has taken in his posts here at Pharyngula? Or does it mean that you’re diametrically opposed to taking ANY kind of political stance, for the mere and simple fact that it is political in nature?

Are you an anarchist? I’m having trouble understanding what you mean by your post at #259.

I’m confused as to how you expect to effect any kind of meaningful change while disavowing politics entirely.

As glodson said, it seems to me to indicate a position of relative privilege. I wish I had the option of sitting out on political discussions, my rights as a human being safe and sound. And then, of course, there are all those pesky rights of other people that I feel obligated to fight for and protect, too. My stupid ethics keep getting in the way of my dream of political isolationism.

LOL ooh, of course. I suppose that’s why he ran for cover only two posts later? People probably responded to him, which, as we’ve learned is the very definition of ‘abuse’ to these delicate, fragile boys.

Alright. I have been kicked to this thread for asking why ‘cunt’ is de facto sexist. Never thought of it as a sexist term, though my mind can be changed…
I essentially look at it as the female version of calling someone a ‘dick’

Oh yeah, please don’t answer by telling me to read a book or some old threads. I don’y have the time or patience. I am lazy in my acquisition of knowledge… I want it fed to me please.

Courtney Gibson recalls a conversation between the Mayor of Newcastle and the Queen Mother; the Mayor attempted to point out the ‘punts and canoes’ on the river [to which HM the QM] replied: “what exactly is a panoe?”

re-reading Greg’s post, he’s simply being libertarian, whatever he might claim. especially the deeply stupid assertion that “The State” is the sole source of “organized violence”, which is why the existence of “The State” would somehow add organized violence to the list of social ills

Let’s begin with mouthy…
– did not read site policy… if lame is frowned upon my apologies I will gladly change it.
– yes you are actually correct in saying i look at the two terms completely differently. I always thought cunt meant you’re being an ass.. similar to what dick meant to me as a slur. Pussy means you are being a wimp or sissy. I have never seen them used otherwise, so if they have diff meanings elsewhere please forgive my ignorance.
– yes i was being sarcastic in my use of enlightened … am i not allowed a bit of fun?

I do understand you get a fair number of trolls visiting here, though my question was in no way to set something up to later defend the use of the word. I was hoping to get a quick answer and be done with it…

That was my first thought, too. It was strengthened by Greg’s refusal to name his position as well. It’s so convenient, being a libertarian. You get to blame everything else while sitting on your ass doing nothing.

Jadehawk, I guess none of your responses seemed like good answers. I told you why i though pussy was sexist. I also don’t think dick is sexist because there doesn’t seem to be a connection between the anatomy and what it is describing when used as an insult. Same with cunt for me. Not like I like using the word or currently do so…

Mouthy, it seems to you that cunt is obviously and without question sexist. This means that yoiu probably did not have to work for this knowledge since it is almost intuitive to you… If you know of some good posts that explain what you intuitively understand please send some my way.

I also don’t think dick is sexist because there doesn’t seem to be a connection between the anatomy and what it is describing when used as an insult. Same with cunt for me.

really. you think using a synecdoche for an entire sex as an insult fails to connect the two meanings?

seriously, why do you think genitalia are used as insults, if there’s nothing bad about them? does it make sense? do you think it’s possible to insult someone by using a word that has no negative connotation for the people using/hearing the word?

Pussy = Vagina. According to your own admission, this is a sexist insult because it implies that weakness and femaleness are intrinsically linked. One cannot be female without being weak, and one cannot be weak without being feminine.

Cunt = Vagina. How is this not sexist, while pussy is?

And yeah – when someone uses an immutable part of your anatomy and sex as an insult, it feels pretty sexist. When someone uses that insult to target you, then they’re reducing you to a part of you that has historically been considered shameful, evil, “other” and wrong.

mythbri, I have never experienced that term used in the way you described… Though if that is the main connotation of cunt then I would agree it is de facto sexist term. Though does context matter? Can it be used in a nonsexist way…as I always, rightly or wrongly, assumed it was (to me dick and cunt were interchangeable). Mean, but not necessarily sexist.

Also, I have already explained why i feel pussy is de facto sexist while cunt is not. It doesn’t matter if they ref the same thing. Does this mean the word vagina is de facto sexist?

I used Google, and will provide you this link out of the goodness of my heart. If you’re willing to go to the trouble of typing out comments, you should be fucking willing to type far fewer words into the Google machine.

Jadehawk, if it’s only de facto sexist when used as an insult then it’s not really de facto sexist; it’s just sexist sometimes. My question is is cunt like that, only sexist in context, or is it always intrinsically sexist.

And thanks to mythbri that actually was a very interesting and useful link. Answered a bunch of my questions. If we cannot interact here anymore than wherelse?

Just wanted to say sorry about overdoing the Poe on the other thread. I was going to post here to see if I should stop but then I saw lee coye’s comment and figured that it was both hilarious and definitely not something to encourage ever again.

Jadehawk, if it’s only de facto sexist when used as an insult then it’s not really de facto sexist; it’s just sexist sometimes. My question is is cunt like that, only sexist in context, or is it always intrinsically sexist.

I just saw this viral video and put it here to see what people make of it.

You gave no context to the video.
Why should we want to watch it?
Is it funny?
Is it stupid?
Is it exciting?
Is it scary?
You tell us nothing about *why* we should watch it, yet you apparently think it is a good idea to throw it in. As if you expect that we’re going to sit through it?
Wow.

Thanks. I’m not holding out hope. Last time our water went, it was on and off for almost two damn months. (Town water main, *teeny tiny* town). Supposedly, someone is working on it, but I’ll be surprised if I can take a shower in the morning.

Apologies should probably also go to mandrellian and Sophia, Michelin-starred General of the First Mediterranean Iron Chef Batallion, since they put energy into two brilliant anti-troll answers that ended up slightly mis-directed, and, er, to Pterryx for “Ms. Pterryx” and Caine for “Sir”.

Having said that, mocking these people by parody is strangely addictive…

Cicely, town water, piped in. We heard noise about possible ice crystals, yada, yada, yada. The town water main burst about two years ago, and it wasn’t ever properly fixed, so I’m not expecting miracles here, especially as our mayor is in Michigan at the moment.

Ok, let’s try this again. Saying a word is de facto (intrinsically) sexist means it is sexist even divorced of any context. Can you wrap your intrinsically tiny mind around that?

Well it took no time at all before you dropped the charade of the naive genuinely curious innocent to full on insult-flinging, sense-denying, trolling. I’m glad you came out though, it’s always a pain when someone who’s JAQing off keeps up the masquerade of just being genuinely curious about incredibly obvious shit! Honest!

Honestly I’ve never quite figured out the appeal of this kind of trolling, why would you come in under a guise of merely being curious? Does a troll who is “Just Asking Questions” seriously think they’ll somehow get all those mean bitches who are angry about gendered, sexist insults to spontaneously do a 180 if you just get them to Socratically think through their stupid positions about how splash damage is bad?

Oh! He said please and used a smiley face! He must be for real guys and gals :)

No, fuck you thisislame. If you are just seriously naive (and you aren’t) then we STILL would not owe you a fucking thing. Your question has been answered several times and you’re still going on about how someone needs to feed you knowledge? That’s simultaneously impolite and idiotic. But then again since you’re trolling I’d say impolite and idiotic is about the sum of it.

I always thought cunt meant you’re being an ass.. similar to what dick meant to me as a slur.

Where I come from when someone calls another person an “ass”, it’s because they’re “being an ass”. Not sure why the need to substitute a woman’s body part, unless you’re specifically looking to insult someone using a female body part.

funny how i get insulted at each post but when i make one insulting comment (deserved or not) the troll sirens star ringing. this is thunder dome isn’t it? still noone has answered my question which i am still curious about.

Posts 262 through 265 all explained to you why gendered language is bad. You were called a troll because you are acting like a troll. You were being insulted because you are acting like a troll and because you keep asking for people to answer your questions which have already been answered.

People don’t use those words the same way at all, just like they wouldn’t say “practically speaking, for all intents and purposes…” is the same thing as “no matter what, this is fundamental to the thing itself.”

Saying a word is de facto (intrinsically) sexist means it is sexist even divorced of any context. [I’ll ignore the confusing qualifiers which I struck out for now]

There are no uses of a word “divorced of any context,” as if their essences float about in the ether with their “intrinsic meanings.” Using a word means that there’s a context, so what’s the kind of context you want to know about in your question?

Can you wrap your intrinsically tiny mind around that?

I did, and I responded directly to your loaded question by saying what was wrong with it. Asking the question you did presupposes a whole fucking lot of things (setting aside issues with sexism itself) which you have no reason to do: it only helps to confuse things rather than clarify them. That was my ‘polite’ way of saying it, despite being in the Thunderdome. Can you wrap your mind around that?

Jadehawk, if it’s only de facto sexist when used as an insult then it’s not really de facto sexist; it’s just sexist sometimes. My question is is cunt like that, only sexist in context, or is it always intrinsically sexist.

No word has an intrinsic meaning, so your question is pointless.

Yes. Meanings of words are what humans decide they are; they are neither intrinsic nor absolute. “Cunt”, right now, is universally recognised in the Anglophone world as an insult when applied to a person. The fact that it refers to a vagina is reducing the target of the insult to a part of a woman historically demonised, and to which women are routinely reduced themselves.

It’s a short form of saying “You are that part of a woman’s body to which women themselves are routinely reduced; you are therefore worth less than a woman and you are therefore worth less than me.” That is dehumanising, “othering” and sexist.

When using the word to describe the vagina, you’re essentially insulting a vagina, denigrating it and disembodying it from the human it is part of. It’s not a universal insult like “arsehole”, it’s specifically gendered and reductive. That is partially why it’s deemed offensive (I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve overlooked or am completely ignorant of).

Obviously, not everyone takes the same level offence to that or any other word, and I know in many social contexts (e.g. your group of familiars) it might be acceptable to drop the c-bomb and other bigoted insults (and Squid knows I have thoughtlessly done myself – a bad habit I must kick, especially considering Ms Junior Mandrellian is approaching the Age Of Repeat Everything Daddy Says). However it’s obviously best avoided in unfamiliar social contexts because even if you personally think it’s fine (which you shouldn’t, but anyway), most other people don’t. Being a social animal is all about compromise and avoiding saying “cunt” in public – or at all (not to mention making an effort to understand why it’s offensive) – is a small price to pay for ease of coexistence.

Apologies should probably also go to mandrellian and Sophia, Michelin-starred General of the First Mediterranean Iron Chef Batallion, since they put energy into two brilliant anti-troll answers that ended up slightly mis-directed, and, er, to Pterryx for “Ms. Pterryx” and Caine for “Sir”.

When I read one of your wonderful comments in that thread, it was at the end of 16 hour day and as tired as I was (and I also have little experience with Poe’s to be honest), my initial thought was “WTF, have we lost another one?” I did a double take, having recalled reading posts by you in the past that were quite enjoyable. I opted not to respond, because I thought maybe in my exhaustion I had misinterpreted the comment. I’m glad I did.

mandrellian, beautiful answer that makes a load of sense. What i was looking for! Shit, if I got this answer to begin with i would’ve left you fuckers alone. wasn’t meaning to troll but when you immediately (after the very first fucking post) get treating as one it’s hard not to. I kept my cool as long as possible. apologies to whomever it was I decided to direct my insult against.

This was definitely a fun first experience commenting here. build you a backbone or lose it entirely.

The Horde have itchy trigger fingers, especially lately as there’s been a rash of unapologetic sexist trolls acting all obtuse and “just asking questions” (aka “JAQing off”). Unfortunately you and your question sorta resembled one of those instances. Cut the beserkers some slack (I in fact beserked on someone on another thread just today and they were only Poe’ing, damn them to Hades).

But hey, as long as you got the idea that calling people cunts isn’t fucking nice. And if you really did have fun, we all get to award ourselves cookies!

thisislame:
why are you so fucking stuck on this idea that people have to be so nice to you, when you so arrogantly stormed in here demanding to be spoodfed information? You can be a rude ass, but it’s not ok if we respond to you in the same manner?

Yes, I was trying to drop lots of hints that it was parody, like “Meyers” and “I’m being respectful and polite” and “I am threatening to leave forever unless you listen to me because I’m so disappointed in you!” but Poe’s law still held. I felt quite bad when some of the regulars took it seriously because it would be really upsetting stuff to read if you didn’t know it was a joke. Then LEE COYE took it seriously which, while hilarious, was also a double take because I literally accused you all of being literally exactly the same as the Nazis and claimed that I was a lumberjack and…yeah, time to stop…

Thanks Mandrellian, I did have fun and wasn’t meaning to jaq off. I was not ready for the immediate hostility and became very defensive… I try to ignore the insults which are still coming apparently. Maybe they aren’t happy with the fact that their snotty answers weren’t good enough for me/didn’t convince me?
And ‘you fuckers’ was meant in jest… though I know that is difficult to come across in text.

Yes, I was trying to drop lots of hints that it was parody, like “Meyers” and “I’m being respectful and polite” and “I am threatening to leave forever unless you listen to me because I’m so disappointed in you!” but Poe’s law still held.

That is the problem. Each of those things have been said repeatedly by trolls. And you are a newbie. It is easy for people who are not familiar to mistake you for a troll because trolls say toss things regularly.

Buy, hey, you can always claim lee coye as an ally. Perhaps you can share cake.

Nothing really comes across well in text unless you take pains to make it as clear as possible what you mean. Remember that if you come back – and if you do, do change that username. “Lame” might seem like a pretty mild insult but it’s still ableist.

Then LEE COYE took it seriously which, while hilarious, was also a double take because I literally accused you all of being literally exactly the same as the Nazis and claimed that I was a lumberjack and…yeah, time to stop…

That’s exactly when Smoggy Batzrubble would’ve started chronicling his latest sexual exploits in lurid detail. Well, pretty much all of involved sexual exploits from beginning to end, with some theocratic delusions sprinkled about, but you know what I mean.

Have a Balloon: Oh, I realized you were still Poe-ing and that was beautifully played, well done. That said I really don’t want to be assigned a gender even in jest, because gender assignments are incredibly freakin’ sticky – witness Nerd and Louis getting it wrong in the very same thread. Most regulars latch onto pronoun assignments without even realizing they’re doing it, like everyone. So yeah, no hard feelings, but *public service announcement* let’s not play at assigning binary genders to nonbinary folks. /PSA

Yes, it’s worth emphasising that we have a fair number of people here who prefer to remain gender neutral, and unless it’s obvious or stated what someone’s preference happens to be, best to remain neutral. ( Now Zapp’s in my brain again…)

Yes, I assumed that even lee coye/patrickdoyle would have taken one look at my comments and thought, oh, ha ha, very funny, taking the piss, pretending to be an absolute douche. Rather than “hey! I agree!” I think maybe I should have done what consciousness razor suggested, just to make it REALLY obvious.

I’ve posted here a couple of times before, I didn’t want to jump straight in as a poe because that would have not ended well, but I stayed mostly in the Lounge because I was so scared of being jumped on! :)

But then everyone was friendly :o
…even lee coye :s

So yes, I guess for a lot of people they would not have recognised my name. Fortunately my time just reading the blog (for OVER 70 YEARS) meant I could avoid the apparently common trap of freaking out in response to the “you went a bit far” with “OMG HOW DARE YOU THOUGHT POLICE I’M ON YOUR SIDE”. Partly also because in the persona of Mr Michael Mansname nobody would have noticed the difference.

But is North Korea really all that unstable? I mean, they’re ruled by the third generation of a family dynasty. It’s not like they have regular revolutions or anything. The transfer of power seems to have gone fairly smoothly. Regarding Kim Jong-un himself I have no idea what his temperament is. Does anybody know much about this?

Also, I’m not certain how dangerous they really are. Yes, they’ve got nukes and are developing their missile capabilities, but if I were in their situation, I would too. Nukes means a measure of safety. It doesn’t necessarily follow that they’re going to be aggressive.

There are certainly many problems with North Korea and its leadership, but I’m not sure if instability is one of them. I guess what I’m getting at is, are they really crazy enough to try anything?

Ok, let’s try this again. Saying a word is de facto (intrinsically) sexist means it is sexist even divorced of any context. Can you wrap your intrinsically tiny mind around that?

OMG you guyz, you can’t say words have nasty cultural connotations because of a cultural context where they have been regularly used as words to wound without addressing the specific context of a single person’s usage of the word.

I mean, like my nym right now. Obviously it means that I am physically paralyzed and am talking about my tragic situation instead of using this word as a shorthand for “worthless and disregardable” in a cultural context in which disabled people are not only mistreated on a regular basis, but their condition is used regularly as an unrelated slur reinforcing a cultural notion that people like them and any who can be likened to them are beneath notice and less important than able-bodied people.

Yes, thisistrolling, it turns out that even if you try to use a word in an unrelated context, indeed with almost any context, the history and cultural baggage will still come with it. And thus a comment that wants to use these loaded words has to acknowledge that greater context above and beyond the direct context of the sentence or the “intended usage” of the speaker.

Which is sort of the point of reclamation, acknowledging the existing context and trying to build new cultural contexts (and this part is important) through direct action on the part of the people most affected by the term in order to try and rob it of its cultural power to wound and thus regain a sense of agency.

You can’t reclaim those words on their behalf or disregard a word’s recent history just because you don’t want to be viewed as the sort of asshole who regularly uses words in their contexts as weapons to wound or belittle groups of people just because you, well, are.

North Korea is a difficult to call situation. Is Kim really an absolute ruler or does he just front a junta ? How far away from collapse are they, and what will happen if the North Koreans start feeling desperate ?
What if they try nuclear blackmail on the ROK and the ROK call their bluff? To add to that, the DPRK are notoriously difficult to negotiate with. IMO we need to start preparing to talk and keep talking until we bore them into some kind of compromise. I personally do not want another war in the Korean Peninsula. But then I don’t think anyone among the world of the rational does.

However I’m still not clear on why. In the US it seems to be used almost exclusively as an insult directed towards women, which is completely different to how it’s used here in the UK.

Caine:

From the introduction of Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice by Jack Holland:

I grew up in Northern Ireland, a world away from the Punjab, North Korea and East Africa. But it was a place where the word ‘cunt’ expressed the worst form of contempt one person could feel for another. If you loathed or despised a person, ‘cunt’ said it all.

The word was scrawled on the walls of rubbish strewn back alleyways or in public toilets reeking of urine and faeces. Nothing was worse than being treated like a ‘cunt’ or nothing so stupid as a ‘stupid cunt’.

Belfast, Northern Ireland, the city where I grew up, had its own peculiar hatreds. Its sectarian animosities over the years have made it a byword for violence and bloodshed. But there was one thing on which the warring communities of Catholics and Protestants could agree: the contemptible status of cunt.

[…] we were also following the inner logic of our own powerful feelings, the same rage which we articulated with monosyllabic concision in the word ‘cunt’.

‘Cunt’ is the pinnacle of utter contempt. It’s an expression of profound misogyny, given the thousands of years women have been held in contempt and often reduced in status to nothing more than a trash receptacle, a place for any man to dump his semen and move on. Consider what you are saying when you let loose with a “you silly cunt” aimed at one of your friends or similar. You may have the feeling that it’s okay to use the word towards men, in a friendly sense in the UK, however, that doesn’t remove the rage and contempt in it when it’s snarled at a woman, does it?

Why is it alright to call someone an objectified, despised body part? What are you really saying about that person? If the answer is “well, I don’t think about it, it’s just a word”, then you should do some thinking and reading.

On the Friday before last Monkey, when I was haranguing the priest from my hospital bed, I suggested a list of minimum demands that the Catholic Church should meet, predicting its imminent demise if they weren’t met.

The first of my demands was the resignation of the Pope.

Step one accomplished already, in less than two months. =^_^=

Unfortunately, it isn’t likely that they’re going to follow up with my other suggestions from my rant!

Now they just have to fail to replace the Pope; retire all the current cardinals and abolish all levels of church hierarchy; hand over to the secular authorities everyone involved in the physical, mental and sexual abuse of minors and other vulnerable people, and all those who were involved in the hushing-up of the same in any capacity; re-allow people to declare themselves no longer church members and stop using the inflated figures caused by the abolition of self-excommunication to throw their weight around in the secular world; withdraw opposition to the laity using any reproductive strategies they damn well please; withdraw opposition to marriage equality; declare the absolute, non-qualified, equality of all people regardless of age, sex, gender, gender-expression, sexuality, ability, race, religious affiliation (if any) etc.; return all looted treasures to their country of origin; sell all other assets (hospitals, schools, orphanages and similar should be handed over to state control in lieu of taxes) and distribute the proceeds amongst the poorest of the poor, regardless of religion; return the church to a grass-roots movement without a clergy, where the congregations are small and meet in one anothers’ houses with the members taking turns to hold mass. No leaders, no priests. All equal, all taking turns.

The de-centralisation and resultant fracturing of the RCC could be the best thing to happen to the world since the reformation. No longer would a huge amount of power be concentrated in a single Christian denomination. No more top-down pronouncements. Catholics would have to start thinking for themselves what their faith means in a modern world. How to be Christ-like without following strict orders from an out-of-touch hierarchy (as many do already, of course). And, who knows? They may come to the same conclusion that many of us have come to: that the supernatural claims are bunk, and that it is possible to be a good person and have a beneficial impact on the world without following any religion at all.

SGBM : you are cherry picking ancient statements made many years ago on another blog when I was a different person and which I have long since dis-owned and rejected as opposed to the many more numerous and recent statements contradicting them as noted with, for example, the last link.

I’m pretty sure you would have said things in the past that, in hindsight and after reflection, you now wish you hadn’t said. It would therefore be wrong to hold those past statements against you because you’ve rejected those statements and grown and learnt. Same applies here to me.

(comment #771. 29th January 2013 at 8:20 am) that you are asking those questions mainly for the purpose of seeking ammunition to use in some future argument you’ve already devised against me and are thus not sincerely seeking answers but are rather arguing in bad faith.

Strange gods before me ॐ, what you are doing here is misrepresenting me and my views, bad faith arguing, spamming and cyber-bullying and you are being unfair, intellectually dishonest and factually wrong. Please stop it.

PS. No, I am not being bullied off this blog by a few fellow commenters who happen to dislike or and disagree with me. I’ve made that quite clear here :

Those who hate me here have equally made their feelings towards me known. If they wish to ignore me in the future that’s their choice, if I wish to ignore them that’s mine. If they keep making things nasty (&/or boring) for other readers here, well that’s their choice too. I suggest they let PZ and Chris Clarke run this blog as they choose just as PZ and Chris Clarke (& I) would happily let them run their blogs as they choose.

Are you saying there’s something wrong with coming up with new more positive terminology or something?

Yeah, nothing wrong about privileged people inventing pet-names for underprivileged people and sticking labels onto them whether they like it or not. Nothing racist to be seen here, move on people.
You know, after your recent whine over at the other thread, you could just demonstrate that you’re not fucking racist and say something like “Damn, yes, that was totally inappropriate. I apologize.”
But I guess you’ll double down again and whitesplain how that was totally not racist because you said so.

Are you saying there’s something wrong with coming up with new more positive terminology or something?

All you’re doing is trying to find a way to pass your racism by people. Hey, didn’t work, fuckwit! As I said earlier, in regard to your “melanin-enriched” garbage, you’re such a racist you just can’t manage to describe or talk about people as people. You just have to give in to your deep need to stereotype and pigeonhole, which screams “I’m a racist fuckstick!” all over the place.

Of course, as I said previously, perhaps I’m wrong, and you’ll start referring to yourself and other western white people (to you, the only actual humans) as melanin-deficient.

A New Zealand coroner has ruled that a 30-year-old woman died after drinking too much Coca-Cola.
[…]
Her family says in the months before her death, the mother of eight had consumed huge quantities of the soft drink – up to 10 litres a day.
[…]
Coca-Cola says it vehemently disagrees with the coroner’s findings, adding that experts could not agree on the most likely cause of death.

Sadly no, but it could be any one of a million MRA types who thinks he’s clever to find you (yeah I know, your nym is linked to your blog) and prefers to shame you on your home turf. I suspect he’s already in the Dungeon and can’t post here..

The thing that bugs me the most about crap like “melanin enriched” is that, once again, it assumes White as the default condition. White is the norm – if the group of people you’re referring to are all White you can just say “people” – any and everything else requires a qualifier. The whole thing reeks of paternalism and privilege.

The thing that bugs me the most about crap like “melanin enriched” is that, once again, it assumes White as the default condition.

Yes. Aside from that being a racist assumption, it also fails on genetics and population percentage. The genes responsible for European pale skin are relatively recent additions (“whiteness” spread through Europe between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago) and they’re a pretty small minority when compared to the global population.

That’s one of the things that often annoys me about reconstructions of early modern humans, which almost always have white skin in the west. Meanwhile, the earlier human species tend to be a generic light brown with dark hair*. It ties ideas of modernity–and what we consider human itself–to skin color, despite the fact that 12,000 years ago none of our ancestors were white and all of them were physically modern humans. “White” isn’t the norm for humanity and never was. Only isolation and ethnocentrism has allowed certain populations to believe it is.

*The exception to this is the more “sympathetic” reconstructions of Neandertals in recent years. When a reconstruction is made that is supposed to emphasize their similarities to us, the fact that some of them had light coloring is suddenly very important. The reconstructions where the differences are being emphasized are usually darker.

The thing that bugs me the most about crap like “melanin enriched” is that, once again, it assumes White as the default condition. White is the norm – if the group of people you’re referring to are all White you can just say “people” – any and everything else requires a qualifier. The whole thing reeks of paternalism and privilege.

Have you gotten to the part where Kimmel discusses the sex rape of women on college campuses after being deliberately gotten drunk/drugged and the results of a survey he did when he showed stats on this to 40-something college grads? Specifically, the, uh, imbalance in responses of men and women?

Oh, and how the #1 force pushing back against colleges putting in firm rules regarding alcohol, drugs and partying in relation to sex is alumni complaining about “banning fun”?

The thing that bugs me the most about crap like “melanin enriched” is that, once again, it assumes White as the default condition.

This. And also it’s a silly framing. I am clearly melanin deficient, not default or normal or ideal. Humans are supposed to be able to go outside for more than ten minutes at a time without searing pain and for more than sixty minutes without their skin spontaneously peeling off.

Have you gotten to the part where Kimmel discusses the sex rape of women on college campuses after being deliberately gotten drunk/drugged and the results of a survey he did when he showed stats on this to 40-something college grads? Specifically, the, uh, imbalance in responses of men and women?

Oh, and how the #1 force pushing back against colleges putting in firm rules regarding alcohol, drugs and partying in relation to sex is alumni complaining about “banning fun”?

I’m just now getting to that.

“Profoundly depressing” ain’t half of it.

Holy shit, you aren’t kidding. I think if I were a parent, I’d be hiding in a closet.

For the benefit of those who have not read Guyland, I’ll explain what happened when Kimmel presented stats on how male undergraduates drug/give extra-strong drinks to/coerce female undergraduates in order to have sex with rape them to men and women who (statistically speaking) are their parents:

The response of the women was (1) to be horrified and (2) express feelings of sympathy for the young women.

The response of the men was to express frustration that things weren’t like that when THEY were undergraduates. And wish that they were 19 again.

Kimmel does qualify this and say that these responses were not universal, but that there were the two dominant responses.

Mr. President, draft the Nuge. Let them know what the Great American Satan looks like turned up to eleven.

Imagine you’re a shy, cave-dwelling Talibanista, and you’re confronted by a yowling Motor City staple of classic rock radio stations, shouldering a bazooka and clutching the Second Amendment and making that face that you see on the cover of Cat Scratch Fever.

(How do you say “gosh, that’s quite something” in Pashto?)

President Obama, you owe it to the United States of America to draft this hunk o’ has-been rockstar. Let the Nuge serve proudly and loudly on the front lines, before the war ends and he is forever denied this headlining gig.

Moreover, it is time to clear the Nugent name. As the Ted Nugent Draft is shouted from the mountaintops, let there also be proclaimed a bitchin’ presidential pardon, forgiving Mr. Nugent for whatever caused him regretfully to decline active duty during the Vietnam War.

You’re good to go, Ted. No cowardice in your past, and none in your future.

And when the last of the troops comes home, Colonel, we’ll leave you to Wango Tango in Tora Bora, armed to the canines, and you can personally scour the caves for left-over bad guys: solo like Rambo. You’ll have all the big-bored gun tech you could possibly dream of. There ain’t no ban in the ‘Stan—you won’t be prosthetically neutered by chickenshit small-capacity liberals. This will be the unfettered Nuge, a one-man death-dealin’, cat-scratchin’ war machine: the guy immortalized by Guitar World magazine for playing #7 in the “100 Worst Guitar Solos” of all time. Surely it’s time to add to that honor a posthumous purple heart.

So just thought I’d pop over and say that I’ve left a comment on concordance’s channel asking him to make a video explicitly stating his opinion on the abusive behavior of the people from the SP.

I have no problem with him wanting to debate the merits of freezes peach, he’s wrong but that’s beside the point, but I DO take issue with him and other commentators saying ‘PZ is bad for banning people.’ while not condemning the actions of a group that is straight out abusive.

I’ve been subscribed to his channel for a long time now and if he isn’t willing to do that then I’ll remove my subscription. I can always manually check for new videos that are science focused rather than bullshit focused.

…and I see this book is available for the Nook, so I guess I know what I’m reading tonight.

I have it on my nook, and I’ve been doing a lot of highlighting and note taking, but take Esteleth (and me) at our word – it is profoundly depressing. It does highlight just how much work needs to be done in regard to cultural sexism – about 95% of it involves dismantling the toxicity of masculinity, the concept of being a man. This shit is so deep rooted and so awful, Gah.

I think it’s an important book to read, especially important for anyone who has children.

By way of Amphiox’s #416 (and “thanks” to SteveoR’s racist shit), I decided to explore the origin of the term ‘African-American’.

The term African American carries important political overtones. Earlier terms used to describe Americans of African ancestry referred more to skin color than ancestry, and were conferred upon the group by colonists and Americans of European ancestry; people with dark skins were considered inferior in fact and in law. The terms were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which some thought were being used as tools of white supremacy and oppression. There developed among blacks in America a growing desire for a term of self-identification of their own choosing.
With the political consciousness that emerged from the political and social ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, blacks no longer approved of the term Negro. They believed it had suggestions of a moderate, accommodationist, even “Uncle Tom” connotation. In this period, a growing number of blacks in the United States, particularly African American youth, celebrated their blackness and their historical and cultural ties with the African continent. The Black Power movement defiantly embraced Black as a group identifier. It was a term social leaders themselves had repudiated only two decades earlier, but they proclaimed, “Black is beautiful”.
In this same period, a smaller number of people favored Afro-American, a common shortening (as is ‘Anglo-American’). However, after the decline in popularity of the ‘Afro’ hairstyle in the late 1970s, the term fell out of use.
In the 1980s the term African American was advanced on the model of, for example, German-American or Irish-American to give descendants of American slaves and other American blacks who lived through the slavery-era a heritage and a cultural base. The term was popularized in black communities around the country via word of mouth and ultimately received mainstream use after Jesse Jackson publicly used the term in front of a national audience. Subsequently, major media outlets adopted its use.
Some such as Maulana Karenga and Owen Alik Shahadah argue African-American is more appropriate because it accurately articulates geography and historical origin. Thus linking a people to a continent as opposed to an abstract color. Others believe the term black is inaccurate because African Americans have a variety of skin tones. Surveys show that the majority of Black Americans have no preference for “African American” or “Black,” although they have a slight preference for “Black” in personal settings and “African American” in more formal settings. Many African-Americans expressed a preference for the term, as it was formed in the same way as names for others of the many ethnic groups in the nation. Some argued further that, because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systematic attempts to de-Africanize blacks in the United States under chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to a specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker.
For many, African American is more than a name expressive of cultural and historical roots. The term expresses pride in Africa and a sense of kinship and solidarity with others of the African diaspora—an embrace of pan-Africanism as earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois and George Padmore.

[emphasis mine]
I rather like the idea in bold. Seems like a conscious effort to not define a minority group by their race (especially when said race was/is discriminated upon because of the color of their skin).

I’ve had some thoughts tumbling about, inspired by the goings-on here at Pharyngula (I wish more people who complain about “rudeness” would take advantage of the ability of the comments here to stimulate thought, whether or not you agree with the comments themselves). Two things:

I have a friend on Facebook who posted this yesterday, which I’ll repeat verbatim with a TRIGGER WARNING that it contains language of rape culture, albeit in an “imaginative” way:

I’m the kind of guy who’d slip a girl a roofie, and have her wake up clothed and alone in the disneyland hotel with a park hopper pass on the nightstand. Just to let her know that sometimes the world is kind.

I and several others (male and female) commented on this status, telling him how creepy it was that drugging and kidnapping could be okay in ANY context. Several others leapt to his defense, saying that they would love to be roofied and transported unconscious to Disneyland.

This really drove home to me the idea that rape culture is all about entitlement, and with that comes a sense of ownership. Even in this case of “benevolent” sexism, the woman (sorry, “girl”) in this situation has no say in the matter, even if the end result is “positive”. And somehow, this sense is considered “kind”.

I’m not sure if I even need to make this clear, but this friend on Facebook is most definitely a Nice Guy. His response to the people who said they wouldn’t mind being roofied to Disneyland was “I love how some people understand me.”

…

The second thought I had is more of a memory that was jogged by discussion on the “I am asked a question about commenting” thread. Specifically, the talk about “tokenism” making objects of the people who are supposed to be representative of the “Other”.

When I was in college, I went on a school trip to a conference related to my field of study with several other students. We had with us a few faculty members, one of who was black. One of my friends and fellow students kept referring to this faculty member (with whom he had a good and cordial relationship), as the “token black guy.”

When we boarded the plane and were waiting to take off, my friend used (AGAIN) the term “token black guy.” A black woman who was sitting in the seat in front of him turned around.

“Excuse me,” she said, politely. “My name is ______. What’s yours?”

“Scott,” my friend replied.

“Scott, it’s nice to meet you,” she said warmly. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I felt like I needed to let you know that what you said really bothered me.”

My friend was instantly embarrassed. “It’s kind of an inside joke – ”

“I’m sure it is,” the woman said. “But I’m also sure this gentleman has a legitimate right to be here, so he’s not really a ‘token’, is he?”

My friend tried again. “No, of course not, but it was a joke – ”

“Yes, I know. It doesn’t come off that way in public, though. Thanks for your time, and have a good flight.” The woman turned back around in her seat, and that was the end of it.

I was struck then by how well she handled the situation. I was struck again reading the discussion in the thread I mentioned above that the black faculty member (who is a fantastic, good-natured guy) said nothing in Scott’s defense in this situation, even though he was perfectly able to.

Just another reminder about how people with privilege can wield it like drunk, bumbling elephants. And a simple “Hey, don’t do that” should not be such a BIG FUCKING DEAL.

Eh, the story took place in Australia, and Mr Fernandez is from Malaysia, so ‘African American’ would be wildly inaccurate, being that he’s not American nor of African ancestry.

That part was in reference to StevoR’s other post, the one where he (once again) doubles down on his ignorance, and in which he himself brings up African American as an example.

And indeed, as always, it is that SECOND post, that doubling down, that confirms the racism. The first post could be written off (and forgiven on a first offence) as unrecognized privilege and other sorts of ignorance. But the refusal to admit error, to apologize, to obstinate insisting that no, there was nothing at all wrong in any way with the words he original chose, THAT is where the racism is revealed.

I rather like the idea in bold. Seems like a conscious effort to not define a minority group by their race (especially when said race was/is discriminated upon because of the color of their skin).

Indeed.

But why I consider the most pertinent in your citation is issue of agency. It was the people in question who, as a community, chose the term, brought it into use, popularized it, and both directly and indirectly iin the arena of popular usage, debated amongst themselves whether and how to use it.

Not some random white Australian dude arbitrarily decided for himself what is and is not proper an appellation to use to call someone ELSE.

The college friend in the second story became “not my friend” when we got into a heated argument about abortion, where he would not budge on his idea that men should be able to prevent their wives/girlfriends/sexual partners from having an abortion if he didn’t want them to. We couldn’t come to any kind of agreement on this, obviously, and the discussion hurt the rest of our friendship.

I’m the kind of guy who’d slip a girl a roofie, and have her wake up clothed and alone in the disneyland hotel with a park hopper pass on the nightstand. Just to let her know that sometimes the world is kind.

Great green biodegradable Christ in hot pants. I’ll be over there —-> trying to locate my jaw.

I’m the kind of guy who’d slip a girl a roofie, and have her wake up clothed and alone in the disneyland hotel with a park hopper pass on the nightstand. Just to let her know that sometimes the world is kind.

…

What? What the fuck?! And this guy thought that this status update was good? In any stretch of the imagination? “Hey, I drugged you and dropped you off in the parking lot of a theme park, because I’m a good guy.” Not seeing how this follows.

Fuck. I mean that is just creepy and stupid. I know he didn’t do this. This sounds like an asshole who would defend this crap with the joking defense. Not that it is funny. Or anything.

I’m the kind of guy who’d slip a girl a roofie, and have her wake up clothed and alone in the disneyland hotel with a park hopper pass on the nightstand. Just to let her know that sometimes the world is kind.

Even I can tell that is unambiguously creepy — a power fantasy.

What it would tell the “girl” is that she is powerless and safe only at the mercy of others; also, the obvious concern upon regaining consciousness would be to wonder what was done to her while she was unconscious.

Mythbri, the first one. That is absolutely terrifying. I do not care that his intention is “kind”. He is taking away that woman’s (NOT GIRL!) agency. If he was truly being kind, he would give that gift while she was conscience and in control.

Guyland revolves almost exclusively around other guys. It is a social space as well as a time zone–a pure, homosocial Eden, uncorrupted by the sober responsibilities of adulthood. The motto of Guyland is simple: Bros Before Hos. … Just about every guy knows this–knows that his “brothers” are his real soul mates, his real life-partners. To them he swears allegiance and will take their secrets to his grave.

mythbri:
That FB friend is an utter douchebag. Drugging someone and taking them *anywhere* is not, will not, cannot be fun (in my book, anyways). Drugging a woman, and taking her anywhere is even worse (the treatment of women by men as being objects…things to be used or acquired makes it worse than if a woman drugged a man).

I know. His defense, what there was of it, is that this was supposed to be a quirky, off-the-wall, “re-imagining” of something bad into something good.

I didn’t tell him that I know for a fact that he and I both know women who have been raped. I didn’t tell him that one of those women in particular could have been badly triggered by what he’d said. I didn’t tell him about the underground warnings that we women gave each other in college (this guy was also a “friend” from college) about which guys would over-pour drinks, which guys got “handsy” when they were drunk, which guys should just never be spoken to ever again.

I haven’t yet come up with a good way to tell all of that to someone who has literally never thought of things in that way before.

In his mind, it was an abstraction. A hypothetical situation.

For a lot of other people, it is their reality. I can’t adequately communicate to people how those worlds are the same one.

When I was in college, I went on a school trip to a conference related to my field of study with several other students. We had with us a few faculty members, one of who was black. One of my friends and fellow students kept referring to this faculty member (with whom he had a good and cordial relationship), as the “token black guy.”

When we boarded the plane and were waiting to take off, my friend used (AGAIN) the term “token black guy.” A black woman who was sitting in the seat in front of him turned around.

“Excuse me,” she said, politely. “My name is ______. What’s yours?”

“Scott,” my friend replied.

“Scott, it’s nice to meet you,” she said warmly. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I felt like I needed to let you know that what you said really bothered me.”

My friend was instantly embarrassed. “It’s kind of an inside joke – ”

“I’m sure it is,” the woman said. “But I’m also sure this gentleman has a legitimate right to be here, so he’s not really a ‘token’, is he?”

My friend tried again. “No, of course not, but it was a joke – ”

“Yes, I know. It doesn’t come off that way in public, though. Thanks for your time, and have a good flight.” The woman turned back around in her seat, and that was the end of it.

A part of this that strikes me is the fact that “inside jokes” are for INSIDE. As in “inside the circle of friends” or “inside your house” and so on. Something that I’d say to my family or friends may not be suitable for mass consumption, and would likely seem insulting to an outsider when it may in fact be a term of endearment. Plus lots of racial slurs referring to the racial group I belong to, and sometimes towards my friends who are other races. That used to happen a lot, in a sarcastic sort of “come on, you know that’s what a white racist would say if he was sitting and watching us!” kind of way.

Which of course brings us around to punching up versus punching down, and power differentials. Privileged college friend takes black faculty member’s silence as consent and even approval. Black faculty member understands that not putting up with privileged college student’s casual racism may be more trouble than it is worse, especially if they know that there’s a history at that school of “uppity” black faculty being slapped down as “reverse racists” or “troublemakers” for complaining about racist students.

Which of course brings us around to punching up versus punching down, and power differentials. Privileged college friend takes black faculty member’s silence as consent and even approval. Black faculty member understands that not putting up with privileged college student’s casual racism may be more trouble than it is worse, especially if they know that there’s a history at that school of “uppity” black faculty being slapped down as “reverse racists” or “troublemakers” for complaining about racist students.

Yes, that was my realization as well. Thinking back on it, being a black faculty member at a state university with a very small population of people of color, and with plenty of privileged white kids still trying to figure shit out, I’m amazed at the patience he must have had. I lament my lack of understanding that prevented me from addressing some of the things I recognize only now, looking back on them.

…

@Caine

I’m at a loss as to how anyone could view such an act as one of kindness.

I couldn’t understand it, either. And it says something about how entrenched we are in a rape culture that I’m happy that at least I wasn’t the only one who protested.

Really, the stand on gendered slurs is not that hard to understand, and people have been talking about it for a really long time; there’s something like a dozen threads on Ophelia Benson’s blog I could cite. Oh wait, I don’t have because someone else has done it for me!

The following threads are from the ur-blog, http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org — just add these paths to the base URL:
/2009/the-epithet-question/
/2009/knowing-what-words-mean/
/2009/here-kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty/
/2009/empty-signs/
/2010/epithets/
/2011/what-was-that-we-were-saying-about-sexist-epithets-five-years-ago/
/2011/crazy-american-bitches/
/2011/invitation-to-a-dialogue/
/2011/the-nuanced-discussion/

And since the move to FTB:
freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2011/09/what-misogynists-call-outspoken-women/
freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/01/misogyny-what-misogyny/
freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/02/that-would-come-in-handy/
freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/03/man-boobz-v-reddit/
freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/03/i-get-email/

Probably more I could cite without trying too hard to search. And that’s only Ophelia’s blog.

“Cunt” is wrong for 2 reasons. First, because there is a long and ugly history in Western culture (Britain & US alike) of objectifying women–of collapsing them down into a body part. So, to refer to a woman as a specifically-female body part props up the objectification of women as ‘female parts’ only.

Second, the implication of calling someone a ‘cunt’ as a slur is that a ‘cunt’ is a bad, dirty, gross thing to be. Which implies that it’s a bad, dirty, gross thing to have. And again, there is a long history in Western culture of treating women’s vaginas like they are gross, bad, dirty and shameful (as well as hysterical, emotional, ect.) So again, using the word in this way carries a lot of cultural baggage that is NOT simply US-centric, but Western-centric.

On sexist insults in general

In general–if a word has a history of being used to shame, control, denigrate etc a marginalized or disempowered group, then its a good idea not to use that word because it has too much cultural baggage. Its simply too loaded. Even if YOU don’t mean it that way, there are plenty of people who DO mean it that way. The meaning hasn’t changed to such an extent that the other, marginalizing meaning doesn’t still exist, and isn’t still actively used. Using these words at the least aids in keeping the sexist connotation alive. It gives aid to sexists who use the word in that way. And, at most, it actively causes people to frame marginalized groups in certain ways.

Let me give an example. Using the word “collateral damage” instead of “civilian casualties” changes how many people feel about war because it obscures the fact that civilians are dying. I think that, in this same way, using sexist words inures people to sexist ideas. Using “mankind” to refer to humankind implies that “man” is the default and “woman” is the weird Other. So too ESPN have sections for “basketball” and “women’s basketball,” as if men playing basketball is the default. Calling a woman a “bitch” -even when referring to one specific woman- buys into sexist ideas like “women should be quiet and submissive” and “women who are aggressive are masculine.” This social baggage exists, regardless of intention.

Numerous studies have shown that sexist insults, even when used towards only one person, affect the group as a whole. These terms create splash damage. There’s lots of info on this out there. Words cannot be divorced from systems of meaning.

Finally, if the goal is to communicate with me as a woman in skepticism, and I say, “Hey, that word is really offensive to me. It carries a lot of sexist cultural baggage and buys into an apparatus of sexist thought that is still very much in use today. Can we not use it?”– is being able to use the word regardless really the hill you want to die on?

I’m the kind of guy who’d slip a girl a roofie, and have her wake up clothed and alone in the disneyland hotel with a park hopper pass on the nightstand. Just to let her know that sometimes the world is kind.

I think in current racism-study circles, black people are called “Black” and “people of color” refer to all non-white people as a whole. Also, Native Americans are typically referred to by tribal name or as “Indian,” but sometimes First Peoples (though this is used more in Canada than the US).

The response of the men was to express frustration that things weren’t like that when THEY were undergraduates. And wish that they were 19 again.

What the entire fuck? That’s appalling. I don’t even have words.mythbri#448
So’s that. (The first one; the second story the guy was being an obnoxious twerp, but it’s nothing like that shit from FB.) I cannot see of how that could conceivably sound like a good idea. Any idea that starts with drugging someone unconscious, and doesn’t involve them having gone to a hospital for surgery first, is an intrinsically bad one, and this is something that really should be obvious (to someone who actually views those on the receiving end of the drugs as people, anyway, which is exactly the problem here.)Caine
Love the new ‘nym, although technically, it should be ‘garces.’ I actually wasn’t familiar with the derogatory usage of the word, as I’d previously only encountered it as the feminine form a ‘gars’ (Gals and guys, respectively; garce meaning bitch is a usage I hadn’t seen before; this is what I get for only reading French fiction from a century or so ago.)Amphiox

That part was in reference to StevoR’s other post, the one where he (once again) doubles down on his ignorance, and in which he himself brings up African American as an example.

I have a job interview tomorrow at a small college over on the island. I’m really hopeful that I get it, but worried about the travel time (ferry rides SUCK) and about the hours interfering with the one class I’ve already agreed to teach at my current college….

I and several others (male and female) commented on this status, telling him how creepy it was that drugging and kidnapping could be okay in ANY context. Several others leapt to his defense, saying that they would love to be roofied and transported unconscious to Disneyland.

This really drove home to me the idea that rape culture is all about entitlement, and with that comes a sense of ownership. Even in this case of “benevolent” sexism, the woman (sorry, “girl”) in this situation has no say in the matter, even if the end result is “positive”. And somehow, this sense is considered “kind”.

Yeah. The triggering quote about drugging/kidnapping is clearly and unmistakeably sexual objectification, and rape culture intervenes for many people to defend it. Caroline Heldman speaks of the relation of ‘object’ and ‘subject’ in her recent TEDx talk and gives plenty of examples of objectification in her blog on media images; the particular type of objectification at work here is:

1. instrumentality: the treatment of a person as a tool for the objectifier’s purposes;
2. denial of autonomy: the treatment of a person as lacking in autonomy and self-determination;
3. inertness: the treatment of a person as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity;
4. fungibility: the treatment of a person as interchangeable with other objects;
5. violability: the treatment of a person as lacking in boundary-integrity;
6. ownership: the treatment of a person as something that is owned by another (can be bought or sold);
7. denial of subjectivity: the treatment of a person as something whose experiences and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account.